


Alligators Stole My Baby

by Chichirinoda



Category: Men in Black (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 01:00:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chichirinoda/pseuds/Chichirinoda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something nasty in New York's sewers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alligators Stole My Baby

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aeiouna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aeiouna/gifts).



The battered running shoe of an NYPD officer obscured the headline and ground it into the dirty street. Just another piece of trash amongst the rest, human and otherwise, that was flowing down the street into the gutter.

Which just happened to be where James Edwards had been ordered to go.

He couldn't quite believe it, but here he was, staring down a hole in the street. And he actually intended to climb down into it, and try to find what was basically a needle in a haystack - or more accurately, a lost child in a huge network of fetid sewer tunnels.

"What am I, a friggin' babysitter?" he muttered to himself. He glared down the open manhole. "Maaaaan... This is not my day." He glanced upwards, making out a few stars between the towering sky scrapers above. "Night," he corrected. 

He glanced down at the newspaper, noticing it for the first time, then kicked it down the manhole. It fluttered like a bird, and disappeared into the darkness below. He wished it had been his captain's head.

_Okay, no more fucking around. Let's get this done._

Bending down, he set his feet on the ladder and started to climb down. When he was about halfway to the bottom, a strange low sound, like a huge exhalation, reached him along with a rush of air that ruffled his jacket. He wrinkled his nose. "Ugh... _man_. Who farted? Must a been a killer whale. Nothin' else could be that big."

His feet hit the ground and he squinted down the tunnel in either direction. Thankfully there was a sort of shelf along the sides of the tunnels, giving him a dry place to walk, while water and...other stuff... flowed down below. 

There was nothing he could do but pick a random direction and start walking. Maybe he would get lucky and find the kid, safe and sound, around the first corner. 

As he took his first steps, his heel slipped on a wet patch of he-didn't-want-to-know, and he fell hard onto his back with a yell. A skitter and a splash alerted him to the fact that his gun had gotten dislodged from its holster and fallen into the drink.

"Fuck me..." he groaned, getting up and feeling around his belt. Yep, no gun. _Great_. 

At least his walkie-talkie was still there, and for a long moment he considered just radioing for help. Was he really going to go hunting for a possible hostage situation without a weapon? He pulled the radio out and put his finger to the button.

Then again, he wasn't supposed to actually get rough with anyone. He was just supposed to find them, _then_ call for backup. And he could just see the smirking faces of his fellow officers if he called back now. What a chicken - couldn't cut it. He called for mommy within ten seconds.

He growled and pushed the radio back onto his belt, said a quiet, mournful goodbye to his service pistol and stepped around the patch of wetness as he went boldly on his way.

Another blast of air rushed past him, redolent with the stench of human waste, rotting garbage, and...a sweet scent, like flowers.

_Flowers?_

James Edwards, NYPD, headed towards the source of the smell.

~ ~ ~

"Look, Edwards," his superior had said an hour before. "It's the mayor's daughter, and he's made a personal request. I can't just ignore that, got it? All you've got to do is go down where she was last seen and poke around a little. While you're down there looking, we'll be mobilizing S.W.A.T. and setting up a perimeter, but that'll take time. Just go."

"Go fuck yourself, Captain," ...he hadn't said. But he'd really wanted to. Instead he said: "Captain, I'm just one guy. How do we even know she's down there? I could look forever and never find her."

"All the reports say she was last seen near the man hole at Division and Canal, and there was a struggle," the captain said firmly. "She and an adult male went down into the manhole. She can't be that far from there, and we're expecting the hostage call to come in any minute. We need you to get in there and pinpoint their location exactly so we can extract them."

"Don't worry, slick," his overweight partner chortled, slapping James on the back. "I'll be right behind you, with S.W.A.T. You just find that kid and give us the signal. S.W.A.T. will do the rest."

"It has to be a small strike, er, team," the captain grunted. "If there really is a hostage situation, there's a lower chance of the perps getting spooked than if there's dozens of guys banging into each other. You go in quiet, and don't alert them. Think of it like a scouting mission."

_I think of it like bullshit,_ thought James. He didn't know what it was - maybe that he was new and this was some kind of hazing ritual. Maybe because of his attitude. Hell, maybe because he was black, who the fuck knows?

What-the-fuck-ever. He wasn't gonna argue. Fuck S.W.A.T. and fuck all the barrel-assed whities who didn't want to get their feet wet.

"I'll do it, Cap," he said with false cheerfulness. "You can count on me." Asshole.

"Just don't let the crocs get you," his partner laughed. "Run fast, tiger."

_They're alligators, dumbass._

~ ~ ~

Kay bent, running his scanner over the small sheen of yellow goo stuck to the right wall, and frowning. Dee stood back, ostensibly covering his six, but also wiping his face with a handkerchief. There was a wheeze in his chest that Kay didn't like, but he was a solid officer, experienced, and Kay knew even if he was getting long in the tooth - weren't they all, even him - he could count on his long-time partner when shit got real.

"Red spectrum," he said, straightening and using the distraction of pocketing his scanner to give Dee a few more moments to cover up his moment of weakness. "Could be a couple things, but at least it's not Moth Beetles. They're on the blue spectrum and their seepage is green, not so yellowish."

"Even still, I've got a real bad feeling, Kay," Dee grunted.

"Look," Kay said, starting up the tunnel once more. "We've narrowed the field. No matter what the papers say, we know it's not goddamn alligators. We've just got to gather more data and then we'll know what we're really up against."

Dee paused at the junction. "Shit, Kay, we should have asked the alligators. Are the translators on the blink again? I know they've got problems with English, but Beta Centauri Lizard Folk are usually pretty cooperative with MiB if we can make ourselves understood."

The aliens who had first spawned the rumours about alligators in the New York sewers were, by and large, a friendly bunch, even if their long, tooth-filled jaws made it impossible for them to communicate with humans without a universal translator. Vee had tried to learn their tongue once, but nearly ripped out his larynx on some of the consonants.

Kay glanced at Dee, then away, pursing his lips. "I tried to ask the 'gators, Dee. T'was the first thing I did when I saw the broadsheets."

"And?"

"Couldn't find any of 'em," he said in a clipped tone. "They've either skipped town right under our noses, or--"

"Jeezus," Dee breathed.

"Or they're all dead, or too damn scared of whatever's down here to come ask for help," Kay finished.

There was a heavy pause. "Kay..."

"I know. Let's keep moving."

The two Men in Black moved on, wrinkling their noses as the sweet scent of wildflowers grew overpowering.

~ ~ ~

The flowery smell grew so strong that it actually overwhelmed the stench of waste. Now the breeze was truly a physical presence, ruffling James' clothing in puffs of scent. It drew him on.

Abruptly, he stepped out of a dark tunnel into a wide open junction. It should have been dank and moist, a subway junction formed simply by the intersection of many tunnels radiating out like spokes into other parts of the sewer, and filled with human effluent.

Instead, it was a blanket of grass, dotted with brightly-coloured flowers in red, white, and yellow. The landscape crawled up the walls, thick vines crawling up the walls and across the ceiling, meeting in the middle in a spray of petals and leaves. The air was fresh and filled with the smell of greenery.

In the middle, a child played, her dark hair falling forward to cover her face as she sat in the grass and built herself a daisy chain. Flowers dotted her hair and dress, and she had shed her shoes, her feet digging in the soft, luxuriant grass.

James opened his mouth wide and just stood there for a long moment, staring. This was impossible. Totally impossible.

"Hey," he croaked, moving forward, right to the edge of the carpet of grass. 

The girl looked up and stiffened, dropping her daisy chain and staring at him with wide, frightened eyes.

James held up his hands. "It's okay, uh... are you Emily? The mayor's daughter?"

She nodded hesitantly. "Who are you?"

James reached into his jacket and pulled out his NYPD badge. "It's all right. I'm a police officer. You're safe now."

She cocked her head, eyebrows pinching in confusion. "Safe?"

James took a step forward, onto the grass. It shuddered under him, shifting like a living organism. Vines detached themselves from the walls around him, displaying suckers like an octopus on the underside as they coiled around towards him.

~ ~ ~

When they found the body, Kay let out a long, low whistle.

The man was dressed in a business suit, and lying in a pool of yellow goo, his neck bent at a strange angle - as were several of his limbs. A gun lay beside his hand, and all the fingers were crushed gruesomely. The goo led in a trail away from the body, dotted with the odd flower petal.

Kay ran the scanner over him, but he already knew what he'd find. "Hey Dee," he said quietly. "What kind of alien feeds on human waste, gives off a red spectral trail, lures its victims with a sweet flowery scent, and can do this to a body without blinking twice?"

Dee let out a heavy sigh. "Definitely a Cronisian Cephalopod, Kay. What are we going to do?"

Kay drew his gun and armed it with a soft whine, then strode forward, following the trail. "We're going to see if this poor sap had any friends, and if they're still in one piece."

Dee followed behind, cocking his own weapon, his breathing ragged as it sped up.

It didn't take long before they reached the end of the trail. Kay spotted the man on the 'grass', and let out a shout of warning, raising his weapon and sighting on one of the vine-like tentacles. He ran forward and waved his free arm, trying to get the man's attention. "Hey! Hey! Get out of there, damnit!"

The man turned, but Kay had to duck a tentacle that swung towards him. Dee wasn't so lucky, and Kay heard him cry out as the tentacle grabbed him by the leg and swung him up into the ceiling.

"Dee!" Kay shouted, turning towards his partner, who lay groaning on the floor. 

But there wasn't time to go back and check on him. Two more tentacles undulated down the tunnel towards Kay, who faced the monster and fired on them, the gun bucking in his hand as the laser blasts struck the attacking tentacles. 

A shriek shook the sewers, but the tentacles seemed only singed, though they recoiled, smoking and leaking yellow ichor. The creature undulated, lifting up. The poor sap that had been stupid enough to step out onto its body was flung off his feet.

The creature was like an enormous starfish. The underside wasn't disguised as a plant like the top was, and seemingly billions of pink tentacles wriggled and moved. Kay knew that if he were unlucky enough to get too close, he would be sucked under by those tentacles and devoured by the mouth at the centre.

No way was he going to let that happen.

"Dee, you okay?" Kay asked, trying to find a target that would actually hurt the thing. Why hadn't he brought a bigger gun? At least it was distracted from its victim on its back. Kay would have to find a way to get the guy out of here, somehow, without getting eaten. 

His only response was another groan, but at least Dee was alive. That was good. He didn't have time for anything else.

The man on the Cephalopod's back was yelling, but Kay initially dismissed it as screams of terror - until he realized that the man was actually shouting words.

"Hey _old man_! Get rid of your damn gun!"

The man had actually crawled right to the edge of the creature's body and was steadying himself by holding onto the base of a tentacle, and he was yelling straight at Kay.

"You hear me, or is your hearing as busted ass as your face, huh? Throw away. The god. Damned. Weapon."

Kay stared at the stranger, who was riding a man-eating Cephalopod like a bucking bronco, and looking like this was just another day at the office. 

"Do I gotta come down there?" the man asked in a warning tone.

Their eyes met, and he saw nothing but confidence there. Kay dropped his weapon to the floor. Then, for good measure, he stepped back and pulled Dee's own gun out of his hand. Then he kicked both guns away from them.

The Cephalopod rumbled. And settled. The menacing, fleshy pink body lowered, the upper surface of the creature smoothing out into a welcoming carpet of grass and flowers, the tentacles merging with the landscape to look like innocent vines.

The stranger got to his feet, grimacing and dusting leaves off of his pants. "God _damn_. Hey Emily, you okay girl?"

That last was directed over his shoulder. A disheveled young girl stepped gingerly up towards them and hugged the stranger around the waist, peering from under his arm at Kay.

Kay only had one question. "How...?"

The stranger grinned. "How did I know? Man... the big ass grass monster over here was just tryin' to protect Emily from that kidnapper. I realized when I saw it gettin' all rough with you that it didn't like that you were carryin' a weapon. I lost mine, you see." 

Dee was getting to his feet, and Kay moved to help him up, his mind spinning. 

The stranger followed him, Emily holding his hand. Once Kay had helped his partner to his feet, he turned back to the stranger, who held out his hand with a smirk. "James Edwards, NYPD. And this is Emily, the mayor's daughter. You guys ain't S.W.A.T., are ya? And you weren't here to find her, were you?"

For once, Kay couldn't think of a plausible cover story. He cleared his throat, and glanced back at Dee. "No, we're not S.W.A.T. But if you two will just follow my partner and I, so we can put some distance between ourselves and the creature, I can explain exactly what we're here for..."

Of course, both Mr. Edwards and the girl were neuralized, but as Kay mobilized the cleanup crew to get rid of the body and explain a few things to the Cephalopod - which would be making its permanent home at the Division and Canal Junction - his mind kept turning back to the stranger.

That one, he would be watching.


End file.
